For as much technology as we have, the ground rules of Internet search engine success aren’t clear. And nearly every day I hear about a potential problem that could have been solved by Setting Things Up Right in the First Place.

In other words, you need to control your own domain name. And other stuff.

I’ll keep this simple. And I’m speaking primarily to small and medium-sized businesses — the ones that outsource their IT or don’t have any IT that they know of. (more…)

And I find the answer is a lot like those for “What do I need to be a video (or film) writer?”

Great vocabulary

Great writing skills

Economical writing

Ability to write to visuals

Key word savvyness

Compelling writing (you need to get readers off of the home page! And, the most important!

A willingness (nay, furious need) to rewrite

Can everyone become a web writer? No. It’s just the way the world works. We can’t all be rocket scientists, either.

If you’re writing your own web copy, and you’ve never been paid to write, chances are you’re fouling things up. Writers are trained to be objective, and if you’re running a company and doing your own web writing, you’re not objective.

Something else you need to be a web writer: stamina when quoting your prices. $25 an hour is not enough, no matter where you live. $50 — phooey. Don’t you deserve to make at least as much as your plumber?

My prices begin at $100 an hour and go as high as $150, depending on complexity, research, and a few other factors.

If I could go through the rest of my life, subsidized, I would spend my time letting people know that writing is a skill much more subtle than construction, or banking, or even lawyering. People need to spend years learning it, and even then they will spend the rest of their lives working at it. That’s the challenge and appeal of writing — every task is different and fascinating.

Add Google’s plus one button to WordPress

3. Download Plus One, the plug-in, or use your WordPress console’s plugin area to download. Plus One worked right out of the box, without adding any coding to the header or anywhere else. It was released the same day as the Plus One button itself, so I have a feeling its developer used the months of beta testing to prepare this plug-in. I always prefer using a plugin to messing with the code editor.

That’s it.

Now, when you see a Plus One button and click on it to like something, the “like” will go to a list on your Google Profile.

Google has announced that it’s launching some kind of Plus One analytics. Should be one more interesting piece of social technology in an already competitive marketplace.